Only Divas or late people make you wait almost an hour for them to come on stage, I was anticipating Sharon’s arrival so I could make up my mind which one of these she was.
There is only so much curtain trickery one can manage when attempting to buy more time from the audience until the cans of VB they have downed start bringing out the bogan in everyone…… did I hear a booing before the minx had even got on stage?
But in a massive bombastic style Ms Jones’ highly anticipated entrance made all the waiting feel like it was last year as she plummeted her way through “how do you let a good man down” The way she was gyrating those hips of hers gave me the impression that on her travels there were a few good men she’s had to let down and they are still crying.
So everyone’s seen a black woman perform before with a back up band, right…. But I have to say here that I don’t think I have seen anything come close to this ladies powerful energy she has over the room. Shimmying in her dress she yells, “This dress makes me feel like Tina Turner, and it just makes me wanna stretch” Then proceeds to wave her arms up in the air and stretch her body into convulsions while the band just never stops. All through the set there was never a millisecond of silence and the obvious command she has over her band makes you want to get on stage and fall at her feet like a little lamb.
Which in fact her infectious hip/bum/titty shakes encouraged a few specially invited members of the audience to get up and “shake what their mammas gave them”. The first guy was a skinny little bogan boy, who was just slightly too shell shocked in her presence to get his groove on. After she sent him packing she pulled four girls from the front row to get up and do their business. My jaw was actually dropping that these four little white girls from the inner west could actually move like that. (If they didn’t have boyfriends before last night, I’d bet my signed copy of Barry White’s ‘Cant get enough’ that they do now) Its quite amazing what a little encouragement from a room full of howlers can do to a girls hips.
This lady doesn’t know how to be softly spoken but she manages to get through some story telling about her West African heritage and follows it up by throwing her shoes off and moving that African body to the beat and you feel like the discovery channel just got its groove back.
So Ms Jones, any woman that has her own barman on stage mixing up the good stuff while she performs is a friend of mine. And special note to selves, at your next party if you just can’t get people dancing, throw on a copy of ‘Dap Dippin with Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings’. If there isn’t any simulated love making going on before the third song, well you just have to go and get some new friends.
